Hulbe Observatory

The Hulbe Observatory is primarily for the use of astronomy students at SCC. It has been named in honor of Christoph Hulbe who was a member of the Physics Department from 1968 to 2005. He was passionate about sharing astronomy with the public and passed away in 2010.

It is open to the general public on the first Friday of each month from September to May (except January). Everyone over the age of six (6) is permitted to look through the telescope (smaller children may not reach the eyepiece). All Open Observatory events are free!!! Weather updates are given on the day of the Open Observatory.

Open Observatory Schedule:

Fall 2016

Date

Time

Objects

Featured

The Hulbe Observatory is located on top of Rodda South. The southeastern staircase is the only public access to it:(Image courtesy of Forrest Newman)

The new main telescope is a 0.43m PlaneWave CDK (Corrected Dall-Kirkham) reflector. This is a picture of the telescope:(Image courtesy of Liam McDaid)

Images from the Hulbe Observatory

Here are some images taken in the Hulbe Observatory. Images shown are taken with an SBIG CCD camera and SBIG spectroscope:This is an image of the Ring Nebula (M57) in the constellation of Lyra. The gas in the nebula starts out inside a dying star and later forms a shell around it. Eventually the shell dissipates, leaving at the center a hot tiny White Dwarf about the size of the Earth. The Sun will look like this about five (5) billion years from now.This is a picture of the Globular Cluster M13 or the Hercules cluster. This is a group of stars that lie about 25,000 light years from the Sun in a sparse region of the Milky Way Galaxy called the Halo. The light from this image started its way to Earth in 23,000 bce. The stars themselves are ancient, from between 12 to 13 billion years old and are about as old as the Galaxy itself.This is, of course, a picture of our Moon. Note that the sides of the craters on the left are brighter. Sunlight is coming from the right. This area on the Moon was going through sunrise when this picture was taken.This is a picture of the galaxy M95, which is a spiral galaxy that is about 33 million light-years (10 Mpc) from us. Although this is not a particularly good picture, it was taken from the campus of SCC.

This is a spectra of the star Vega. The dark lines are caused by Hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere above Vega absorbing light from Vega itself. Red is on the left and blue is towards the right.

Spectra of the star Deneb. Click to enlarge.

This is a spectra of the star Deneb. Note the dark lines piling up toward the right. Although Vega and Deneb are about the same temperature, the lines on Deneb are thinner because Deneb is a bigger, less dense star. The spectra of stars can tell us their size!